Voter registration fraud is so small (statistically, it's zero) you couldn't see it with a microscope and actual vote fraud is even smaller, but extremist members of the GOP like Sen. Fischer perpetuate the myth that it's a real problem in order to justify requiring housebound elderly minorities to go get state IDs or be turned away from the polls. Guess which party that helps.

The switch was called "Dagen H" and was imple­mented on September 3, 1967 at 4:50 a.m., at which time traffic every­where in Sweden was directed over to the right side of the road and stopped.
At the time, large numbers of Swedes still drove Ameri­can cars with the steering wheel on the left.
On the Monday following Dagen H, there were 125 reported traffic accidents, compared to a range of 130 to 198 for previous Mondays, none of them fatal. (Probably because everyone was extra careful.) After that everyone got used to it and the number of accidents rose to previous levels.

This photo of wildlife photographer Chris Du Plessis does NOT depict the
recording of 'gay sex pics' and it was taken in South Africa, not Kenya.

AKSARBENT would also bet that the phrase "gay sex pics" is now being used by unscrupulous bloggers as the first three words in blog post head­lines as a Google trol­ling ploy. We disap­prove of this and think it reprehensible to use the phrase "gay sex pics" as a bait-and-switch lure to build traffic.Prof Makau Mutua of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission thinks this discovery by Google may cast Kenyans as world-beating hypocrites or,

Perhaps the loud opposition to homosexuality in Kenya is propagated
by a tiny, but well organized and powerful minority. The silent
majority could be cowed and afraid to speak up because of the stigma of
being branded “ungodly”or “un-African.” Kenya’s mainstream press, the
Mosque and the Church, and the political establishment give vent and
legitimacy to homophobia.

Got a gay or straight hookup app installed? A banking app? A political app? A brokerage app? A cancer, HIV or diabetes app? (If you have all three of the latter, plus a brokerage app, your local PBS station will probably want to talk to you about a legacy donation right away.)
Twitter is now tracking the applications you've installed on your phone to target you for advertisers.
This is facebook-level creepy. HuffPost explains here what you have to do to opt out of this latest digital home invasion.

Branstad asked Godfrey and many others to submit resignations so that
he could name his own management team. Godfrey declined. He noted he
had been confirmed by the Iowa Senate for a six-year term that lasted
until April 2015, and that his job was supposed to be insulated from
political influence so that injured workers could receive fair hearings
about whether they qualify for benefits. After Godfrey declined additional requests to resign, Branstad cut
his pay by $40,000 to the lowest amount allowed for the job.
Administration officials painted Godfrey as a poor commissioner whose
decisions were hurting employers — which Godfrey denied. Godfrey stayed
despite what he called a hostile environment, leaving in August for a
federal appointment as chairman of the Employees’ Compensation Appeals
Board

Godfrey says he was singled out for harsher treatment because he was gay. Branstad says he had absolutely no idea Godfrey was gay. Branstad's prior shenanigans:

Retaliating
against a state trooper who stopped the state-issued SUV in which he
and his Lieutenant Governor, Kim Reynolds, had been tearing down Iowa
Highway 20 at 90 mph in April of 2013. Getting pulled over again for ignoring Iowa speeding laws in Franklin County four months later.Vacationing in sunny Arizona while letting Lt. Gov. Reynolds pretend she
had no idea that $280,000 in secret severance payments were made to
Democratic Iowa state employees the Branstad administration wanted to
get rid of in order to hire GOP cronies.Reynolds, said she had no idea about the quarter-million in secret
severance payments before a story appeared in Des Moines Register, even though she was contacted about the apparent cronyism by the reporter before the piece was published. (One thing Reynolds hasn't hidden is the fact that she's kind of a bitch,on display at a 2012 Council Bluffs campaign stop when she introduced Paul Ryan, who is no piker in that department himself if his aside to a kid in the audience was any indication.)
The severance payments were accompanied by tightly-worded confidentiality clauses
as well as further inducements amounting to thousands of dollars each
to at least two employees to sign additional agreements mandating
secrecy, all of which caused Carol Frank, a former
construction and design engineer who was laid off in September 2011,
to liken the Branstad administration to “a group of renegades,” adding,
“They just didn’t care about anyone else or about rules or law. They
were just hiring their friends.”

Friday, November 28, 2014

...Even as they subtly reminded the body politic that Dems are NOT like those faithless Rethuglicans who recently allowed automated billion-dollar Google and Facebook data centers to be snatched away from Nebraska, together with their several dozen accompanying jobs, which now
have been added to Iowa's economy.
Granted, Nebraska GOP state senators led the way in hastily concocted Cornhusker tax incentive giveaways to lure Silicon Valley plantations to the Midwest, but ultimately they failed because of evil Iowa and its evil plots to forge ahead with evil progressive wind energy.
Beat Iowa! But not if it involves adopting wind energy, for Pete Rickett's sake.

Susan Stamburg at NPR just did a piece on Boston's Museum of Fine Arts' new exhibit, "Hollywood Glamour: Fashion and Jewelry from the Silver Screen," which includes gowns designed by Chanel and Edith Head in "quiet" fabrics that did not rustle enough to attract the attention of early mics. The exhibit is open until March 8.
West, who stood between 4'11" and 5'2", wore ferocious pumps that elevated her 8 1/2 inches and may have had a lot to do with her inimitable walk.
Each double-decker shoe had ankle-strapped white platform shoes bolted to a wooden silver pump.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

It was much-beloved Moscone who made Harvey Milk's election possible by tirelessly promoting district seats over at-large ones for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
So it is richly and achingly ironic that the diversity Moscone worked so hard to foster in San Francisco ultimately benefited the 13-year-old closeted gay kid whose first name was Jonathan and whose last name was shared with His Honor because he was George's son — a son whose true nature his father did not live long enough to share, but unknowingly worked to cherish, dying in the process at the hands of an unhinged bigot.
A little more respect, please, LGBT community.

Dear Abby: About four months ago, the house across the
street was sold to a "father and son" — or so we thought. We later
learned it was an older man about 50 and a young fellow about 24. This
was a respectable neighborhood before this "odd couple" moved in. They
have all sorts of strange-looking company. Men who look like women,
women who look like men, blacks, whites, Indians. Yesterday I even saw
two nuns go in there!... Abby, these weirdos are wrecking our property
values! How can we improve the quality of this once-respectable
neighborhood? —Up In ArmsDear UP: You could move.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Normally a Thursday edition is 75 cents, but the Thanksgiving edition, with the Black Friday ads, is $3 — 20% more than even a Sunday edition and 300% more expensive than a regular Thursday edition. You could argue that the huge size involves more ad insertion effort and distribution costs, but isn't the paper also making extra money from those inserts, many of which it profits from even more by printing itself?
Hey — Warren Buffett, the paper's new owner, didn't go from zero to $60 billion (or whatever) by leaving money on the table, suckers. Wanna save money in stores? You gots to pay the discount crier first. Capiche?

Megan Fox (not the actress, who is undoubtedly much smarter) is QUITE suspicious of all the unsupportable evolutionary claims of Chicago's Field Museum, respected by many, but CERTAINLY not by Fox, whose faith-based skepticism demands to know how the museum knows what happened hundreds of millions of years ago without any video camera evidence. Below, her indignant, learned audit of the museum's tetrapod exhibit:

"Tetrapods took their first steps around 307 million years ago." Who writes this stuff? How do they know this? They don't! ...Maybe they always had feet like that. Maybe that's the way they were made. With feet. Like alligators, you know, that are in the water AND the land? It's not like their fins fell off and then they grew feet. That's what they want you to believe: that the fins eventually fell off and then they grew some feet and they started walking on the land. This is the dumbest theory I've ever heard in my whole life. It's not good. It's really not good. It's bad. It's very bad... Do you know how complex feet are? ...Human feet are so complex that people who make robots have not been able to replicate feet. They can't make a robot with the same-dimensioned feet as a human being 'cause it won't stand up.

For some reason, comments on scholarly Megan Fox's video exposing the bad science of the Field Museum have been switched off, which is a shame since her startlingly revelatory discourse is rapidly going viral.

For the second year in a row, Buzzfeed asked staffers in its London office to find Nebraska, among other states, on a map. Again, the results were as dismal as they are hilarious. Maybe the $3.5 million spent on the governor's new Beechcraft C90GTx airplane will help promote the state in other countries! Oh wait — sadly, the turboprop doesn't have enough range to cross an ocean.

But still, no gay-inclusive Barilla ads seem to have surfaced, anywhere. (If so, we'd love to see them. HRC, how about it?)
Since the world-wide PR debacle, Barilla has done a thorough job of burnishing its image, includingpaying LGBT bloggers to participate in its "Share The Table" promotion but it apparently still hasn't done what the chairman of the privately-held corporation vowed he would never do, in the remarks that got the company in hot water in the first place.

Eight months after Barilla's chairman insulted gays, a gay pasta ad did appear in Italy — fromFindus, a frozen-food brand marketed by the Iglo Group..
Despite this fundamental lack of change, CNN just reported "Barilla goes from worst to first:"

The company created a diversity and inclusion board, launched a training program for employees and contributed to LGBT causes.
"I think the speed with which Barilla invested in these policies and
benefits is a model" for other companies, Fidas of HRC said.

When AKSARBENT checked, we found an interesting fact CNN left out of its report: HRC's high rating was for Barilla America Inc., hq'd in Bannockburn, IL. Barilla's two U.S. factories are in Avon, NY and Ames, Iowa.So, to reiterate: HRC now applauds the U.S. subsidiary of Barilla, even though its two factories were already in gay marriage states that prohibited anti-LGBT discrimination and despite the fact that over 12 months later, Barilla does not appear to have acknowledged gay people in any ads in Italy or elsewhere, even though a different company, which sells frozen pasta dinners, already has done so in Barilla's back yard.
CNN's observation that Barilla has recently contributed to LGBT causes makes cynical us wonder how much HRC got.
Below: Italian MP baits two gay colleagues with 'fag bag' contents: "Barilla's right.
From now on I only eat his pasta."

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

But look at the nice American flags! (Don't read the fine print unless you want to know that (according to the tweet) only 60,000 of 143,000 Koch jobs go to Americans — fewer than half!)
If that factoid doesn't catch your fancy, take comfort in the fact that this troller can spin out six at least six tweets of canned agitprop per minute.
We got 38 from "Tom Nichols" earlier this evening about how wonderful the Kochs and Koch Industries are, even before we mentioned either of them (not that we had planned to.)
Very productive results for whoever is paying him or her.
But pretty off-putting — in a ham-fisted, blunt Koch Bros. kind of way.

Baume doesn't mention last week's Nebraska ACLU news conference announcing the filing of its federal suit against Nebraska's ban on gay marriage (...and civil unions ...and domestic partnerships, which named Jon Bruning, Dave Heineman and ), but he did mention the impending suit last week, and even retweeted AKSARBENT's photo and link to our post about ACLU Nebraska's efforts on behalf of the state's LGBTs.

Wingert has been in broadcasting for at least 40 years and has one of the most recognizable voices in Nebraska. He's also the only openly gay member of the Nebraska Radio Personalities ("Legendary Personalities" Division) that we're aware of, as well as a talented actor and formidable fundraiser for the Blue Barn Theater. Ten minutes of him on YouTube discussing his career and the changes in radio over recent decades is not NEARLY enough, but we'll take what we can get.

Via Silicon Prairie News: The Facebook building is powered by 100 percent renewable wind energy
through the Wellsburg wind project and a partnership Facebook
established with MidAmerican
Energy. The wind project brought 140
megawatts of new wind energy to the grid in Iowa.

Two years ago, Kearney, NE tried to snag this $1.5 billion data center with the help of a groveling Unicameral. In Feb. of 2012, AKSARBENT wrote:

Nebraska state senators are falling all over themselves in a rush to pass two bills of tax-break boutique legislation to lure a company they won't identify to their constituents, who will be subsidizing the creation of as few as 30 [turned out to be 75] jobs with millions of dollars in tax and utility rate concessions.

Ultimately the facility was built in gay-friendlier Iowa in large part because Iowa's more developed wind energy infrastructure appealed to FB. (Nebraska has more wind, but doesn't exploit it as extensively as progressive Iowa.)

Via Megan Bannister of Silicon Prairie News come the PR stats, which AKSARBENT has stolen thoughtfully rewritten in Q&A format even though we confess that we have never seen or spoken to Megan Bannister, who, we guess, will now NEVER speak to us:

Question: How much optical fiber is in the building and would it wrap around the earth or reach to the moon, Megan?Answer: 25,000 miles of fiber—that’s enough to wrap around the circumference of the earth and still have some left over.Question: Oooh-la-la! Question: Is the data warehouse property, er, "campus" bigger than Adventureland?Answer: Yes, by 22 acres and it's 42 acres larger than Disneyland!Question: AKSARBENT hates GOP political hack Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds in part because she once said Obama had no "style" — at a political rally for Paul Ryan outside an Uncle Buck's at a BassPro in C.B., like she knows anything about "style." Was that bitch at the grand opening?Answer: Facebook executives were joined by Senator Chuck Grassley, Iowa Lt.
Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa Economic Development director Debi Durham
and Altoona Mayor Skip ConklingQuestion: In Q3, Facebook sold $2.96 billion worth of advertising. Will it donate stuff to local charities to show the world it's as stunningly philanthropic as Iowa's generous and much-beloved casinos?Answer: The company donated 30 laptops to Altoona Kids Klub, a before-
and after-school care program serving about 400 students in Southeast
Polk District Elementary Schools, and Altoona’s mayor mentioned Facebook
has already been involved with the city’s Shop with a Cop Fundraiser.
In October, Facebook announced a Community Action Grant program in
Altoona targeted toward “nonprofits that meet critical community needs
and that promote connection, sharing, economic development and improve
the overall vitality of Altoona and surrounding communities,” according
to its site.

The FCC is currently weighing
whether to classify the Internet like a utility and restrict Internet
service providers from charging content providers for faster Internet
access. This month, President Barack Obama announced his support for
that approach, known as "Title II." But net neutrality advocates are
concerned that the FCC might go with a different proposal,
which would allow for some degree of paid prioritization. Opponents of
this plan say that it would threaten the openness of the Internet by
making it harder for smaller sites to compete. When asked about
her position on net neutrality, Clyburn, who is one of five FCC
commissioners appointed by the president, said that she supports "a free
and open Internet." She pointed out that in 2010, she supported Title
II and a ban on paid prioritization, which is what Obama is asking for
now. But she did not explicitly say that she still supports this plan.
Instead, she wrote
that she has "many of the same concerns I did four years ago, but have
vowed to keep an open mind." Clyburn did not go into detail about what
those concerns are.

Monday, November 24, 2014

The Salt Lake City Tribune (the SLC daily not owned by the Mormon Chuch) says the state's cops are so trigger happy that in the last five years, more Utahns have died at their hands than at those of gang members or drug dealers or child abusers. And in 2014, the Utah fuzz are even ahead of the most common cause of homicide — violence between spouses and dating partners.

Fortunately Omaha's former police chief, Robert Wadman, has weighed in on all this and urges a properly nuanced view of police mayhem:

But Robert Wadman, a criminal justice professor
at Weber State University and former chief of the Omaha, Neb., police
department, said the factors leading up to the decision to shoot a
subject are more subtle than what prosecutors consider when reviewing
the legal justification. Under Utah law, an officer is justified if at
the moment of the shooting the officer reasonably believes deadly force
is necessary to prevent death or serious injury.

"Sometimes the line between is it legal and is
it necessary becomes difficult to distinguish," Wadman said. "In the
judgment of the officer, ‘Is my life in jeopardy? Yes.’ At that point in
time, they’re legally grounded in using deadly force. But the question
is, is it necessary? That’s something that needs to be firmly addressed,
for example, in training."

AKSARBENT has not been this riveted by LDS manhood since Howard Stern asked Donny Osmond if he was circumcised. (We must have fallen asleep during the yes/no answer as we do not recall it, perhaps due to the fact that we tend to tune out D.O. due to his heterosexual supremacist tendencies.
Or maybe Howard (Israel! Israel!) Stern's contrived creepiness invoked our mental block yet again once we were tricked by radio promotion teases into listening.

A calculating-looking Dick Cheney, age 5, in his College View kindergarten classin 1946 after "transferring" from his first kindergarten class at Randolph School

In 2004, Vice President Cheney invited his 1946 Randolph Elementary School teacher, 86-year-old Margaret Van Neste, to a campaign breakfast in Lincoln for Jeff Fortenberry, then running for Nebraska's First District house seat.
The previous year, Cheney had told Van Neste's former teaching assistant, Phyllis Acklie, that one of his fondest Nebraska memories was attending kindergarten at Randolph Elementary School and being in Van Neste's class.What Cheney didn't say was that Neste hardly remembered him (perhaps she was being diplomatic) because that fall, in 1946, five-year-old Dick Cheney was kicked out of Randolph School abruptly transferred to College View Elementary School (now Calvert School.)
So Yale may not have been the first educational institution to have asked Cheney to leave.
This story gets better.
After friends and family of Miss Sylvia Harney (nee Korbel), Cheney's College View teacher, got wind of the slight, the White Housesent a belated invitation to her as well as Van Neste.
Harney did remember Cheney — vividly.
"He just took over," she told the Lincoln Journal-Star.

Full disclosure: This post was written by a proud graduate of Calvert Elementary School, AKA College View Elementary School (national ranking: low).

The first slam came during Weekend Update when Colin Jost (Host Jost! It rhymes!) announced: "Democrats in the Senate were able to stop a bill authorizing the controversial Keystone XL pipeline even though the project could have created thousands of good jobs cleaning off birds."

Later, SNL's first openly lesbian cast member, Kate McKinnon, impersonating German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also had some fun with TransCanada, and President Obama: "America has turned their back to him. I will turn my back to him, but in the fun way... His Keystone pipeline is XL!"

As a fable, it's cute. I kind of like the story about the virgin who has a god baby in the barn. It's like an early episode of Maury Povich. "In the case of Baby Jesus, Joseph, you are NOT the father!"

Cameron has launched a two-front damage control assault on attacks on his film and his wretched personality by begging his fans to distort the lousy Rotten Tomatoes reception of his new flick by flooding the site with positive reviews and simultaneously squelching (via copyright claims) a fair-comment video mocking his attacks on LGBTs.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

UPDATE: Intel isn't the first, or even the second company with imaging technology allowing a user to refocus a picture after it has been taken.

Jim Parsons is already banking $1 million per Big Bang Theory episode, so you know Intel didn't get him cheap. But it's not like the microprocessor behemoth is impoverished...
Some serious coin is being exchanged here, Poindexter.
Meanwhile, from Out (8/6/2014):

For perspective, David Hyde Pierce was previously the highest paid gay actor, reportedly making up to $750,000 per episode when he was on Frasier. Other gay actors’ deals pale in comparison.
Neil Patrick Harris, who is currently wrapping up his Tony-winning Broadway performance as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, only made $210,000 in his final season of How I Met Your Mother.

This is quite a delicate topic which AKSARBENT expects to be fully addressed in yet another egg-sucking Public Service Announcement from Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning.
Oh wait — he's not running for anything right now. Never mind.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Standing at the park watching my 11-year-old son climb on the jungle gym, I struck up a conversation with a woman walking her dog, and I told her about my keepsakes idea. Like most people, she did not want her name used in my article, because she said her vignette was too personal; she also feared being hacked. But she proceeded to tell me that several months after her son committed suicide, she found his password written on a piece of paper at his desk: “Lambda1969.” Only then, after some Internet searching, did she realize he had been gay.

Governor-elect Pete Ricketts stated, “Our citizens here in the state
voted overwhelmingly that marriage is between a man and a woman,” and
vowed to defend the constitutional ban. While Ricketts is correct that
our electorate voted to ban same-sex marriages, it’s indubitably
unconstitutional and an example of the tyranny of the majority. In a
constitutional democracy, Ricketts’ argument is fallacious. What if we
voted overwhelmingly to allow slavery? Or only allow rich, white men run
for political office? Or appoint the badger as the official Nebraska
State mammal? Some things are simply inalienably wrong or violate the
Constitution. ...Governor-elect Ricketts, Governor Heineman, Attorney General Bruning and
the rest of the defendants in Waters v. Heineman, your names will be
included on a list littered with the likes of George Wallace, Joseph
McCarthy, David Duke and Roger Taney. The oath of office requires you to
support the Constitution, not betray it. Blame your generation,
religious beliefs or support for states’ rights all you want. In the
end, history will not reflect kindly on you.

How radically right wing is Deb Fischer, really? Read this, from her website:

Deb Fischer: thumbs up for right-wing, unbalanced
agitprop on public airwaves, thumbs down for the old
rule of presenting both sides of controversial issues

Seriously? Does Fischer really think her base is thatstupid? On what planet does requiring broadcasters using publicly-owned airwaves to present both sides of controversial issues constitute "speech regulation"?
Fischer has the shameless chutzpah to call broadcasting's Fairness Doctrine "radical," even though it was in effect for almost four decades, from 1949 until Reaganites killed it in 1987, in order to clear the way for what is now a slew of right-wing radio nutbags like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage.The only thing radical here is Fischer, herself.
Here's a fair and balanced Wikipedia explanation of the government policy whose attempted resuscitation she called "terrible."

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses
to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so
in a manner that was, in the Commission's view, honest, equitable and
balanced. The FCC eliminated the Doctrine in 1987, and in August 2011
the FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine.The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required
broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial
matters of public interest,
and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were
given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be
done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The
doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that
contrasting viewpoints be presented.
The main agenda for the doctrine was to ensure that viewers were exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. In 1969 the United States Supreme Court upheld the FCC's general right to enforce the Fairness Doctrine where channels were limited. But the courts did not rule that the FCC was obliged to do so.
The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which
limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for
the Doctrine.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Nichols also had an Emmy, Tony and Grammy. He was already a celebrated Broadway director and half of the sketch comedy team of Nichols/May (Elaine May) when he directed his first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, nominated for 13 Oscars, including Best Director, an award he had to wait to win until his second film, The Graduate, which made Dustin Hoffman a star.
The New York Times obituary is here.

Below: the dance scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal and Nebraska's Sandy Dennis, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her Nichols-directed performance.

2014 has been a terrible year for homophobes who wish gays would just STFU. Yesterday, the Country Music Asoociation chose a gay-affirming tune as Song Of The Year and now this: Ty Herndon came out here and Billy Gilman came out here.
Below: Herndon's Living In A Moment and Gilman's She Wanted More (Let's hear it for coded messages!)

Minden, (pop. 3,000) calls itself Nebraska's Christmas City and puts on a holiday pageant, so the timing of a homemade billboard tirade (which borrowed a right-wing Internet meme) couldn't have been worse.
Via Deena Winter of Nebraska Watchdog:

Word of the sign in the central Nebraska town of about 3,000 spread
quickly on Facebook, where outraged citizens immediately began talking
about vandalizing, tearing down or painting over the sign. By Tuesday
morning, the sign had been removed. One man asked what kind of poles it was erected on, saying “I need to
know if I need a metal blade or wood blade for my reciprocating saw.” “Who’s got a paintball gun I can borrow?” another man asked. ...Brett Maline, a Minden native now living in Hollywood, spread the
news of the “awful sign” on Facebook, saying he’s proud to be from
Minden and the sign is not representative of the town. “I fear that people driving through will not know this,” he wrote on
Facebook. “This angers, saddens and embarrasses me and I hope it would
you too. Let’s get something done about it.” A city hall receptionist told Watchdog.org Tuesday morning, “It’s been taken down.”

Nicholas Bergin of the Lincoln Journal-Star reported that it was Mayor-elect Ted Griess who talked to the unidentified sign-maker:

...Griess spoke Monday evening with the person who put the sign up and asked him to take it down. He did. “I
tried to point out to him that a sign of that nature alongside a
highway gives the wrong image for a community,” Griess said. “It was
just a citizen who, I guess, was expressing his political viewpoint. He
had the right to do so, but it was a sign I interpreted, and I think the
vast majority of citizens interpreted, as being very distasteful.” ...Griess said many of those reacting had made a “mountain out of a mole hill.” “I wish it would go away, but it hit the social media,” he said. Outgoing Minden Mayor Roger Jones said most people in town had not seen the sign. “It’s over, done and forgotten about as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

It's easy to understand why Jane Kleeb momentarily clutched (at the end of the first video) during a discussion of Keystone XL, the pipeline that will raise gas prices in the Midwest up to 40¢ per gallon.
The pipeline the GOP claims is essential but that Canadian oil executives say isn't.
The economic ruination of her farmer and rancher friends and neighbors was probably floating through Jane's imagination — not that it's much of a stretch to imagine the huge Ogallala Aquifer, literally the wellspring of Nebraska's $20 billion ag industry, fouled by the company whose last pipeline (Keystone 1) leaked at least 12 times (that we know about) in its first year.
Here's the discussion after the the GOP attempt to force President Obama to approve the building of Keystone XL narrowly failed in the Senate Tuesday.

Here's the discussion on the eve of that vote, in which Canadian oil execs reveal that the pipeline isn't indispensable. (But hey, what would they know about petroleum production next to Mitch McConnell, Kentucky's #1 oil slick?)

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Ruffin passed away in a Las Vegas hospital of unspecified causes. His brother David died at 50 in 1991.

From Ruffin's Wikipedia entry:

In 1961, Jimmy became a singer as part of the Motown
stable, mostly on sessions but also recording singles for its
subsidiary Miracle label, but was then drafted. After leaving the Army in 1964, he returned to Motown, where he was offered the opportunity to join the Temptations to replace Elbridge Bryant. However, after hearing his brother David, they hired him for the job instead so Jimmy decided to resume his solo career. Jimmy Ruffin recorded for Motown's subsidiary Soul label, but with little success. In 1966, he heard a song about unrequited love written for The Spinners, and persuaded the writers that he should record it himself. His recording of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" became a major success. The song reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100
and #6 on the R&B Chart. It also initially reached #10 in the UK
singles chart, rising to #4 when it was reissued in the UK in 1974.
"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" remained Ruffin's best-known song.

“Follow Your Arrow” may have received a modest amount of
radio airplay — peaking at No. 43 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart —
but it fared better on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart (No. 10),
which is determined by streaming and digital sales in addition to
airplay. Clearly, these are stories people want to hear, even if
commercial radio programmers were hesitant to offer them up. “I wish I
could play that song on my station” was a sentiment echoed in various
forms by country programming directors in a Billboard story from last
year.

Lowder also documented Musgrave's impatience with the reactionary shitheads who act as the broadcasting gatekeepers of country music:

When Pridesource.com asked her about the need for country to embrace the LGBTQ community, she was crystal clear:

It never happens and I'm sick of it. It's ridiculous.
Whether or not you agree with gay marriage or the fact that people don't
choose to be gay, we share the same emotions, needs and wants. I just
think that everyone should be included in that. It's definitely time.

Unrelated: This morning, NPR announced that Billy Currington is 41 today.

The snow fell in bands; parts of the Buffalo area have six feet and 2-3 more feet are expected from a different storm already on the way:

Snow plunged off one family's roof with such force that it blew in the back door, filling a room with snow. "It was a huge crash. We all started running back there. We actually thought that it was the roof coming down in the house," said Chrissy Gritzke Hazard, who was home with her husband, five children and three of her children's friends Tuesday. "We were definitely not expecting it to be the doors blown out, the frame, everything, inside the house."

Here's the press release, which we swiped from Bold Nebraska, which has a clever way for you to make sure President Obama vetoes the pipeline, should the new GOP Senate vote the other way in January. (Click on the link, above)
Want to know how YOUR senator voted last night on this issue? Click here.

The Senate voted today to reject a bill forcing approval of the
Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. In spite of heavy pressure from the oil
industry’s friends in Congress like Sen. Mary Landrieu, key Senators
held strong against the dangerous project, recognizing that the pipeline
would not be in our national interest because it would threaten our
land, water, and climate while bringing no economic benefit to the
American people.
Today’s vote is yet another blow to the pipeline’s prospects, as
recent momentum has shifted against approval of the controversial
project. Recent polling showed that as Americans have had more time to
learn about the Keystone XL, support for the pipeline has waned.
President Obama has also made it clear that he has serious reservations
about the project, telling reporters last week that the pipeline would
“[provide] the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our
land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. It
doesn’t have an impact on US gas prices.” The president has also
reaffirmed his commitment to evaluating the pipeline based on its impact
on climate, which experts agree would be significant.
Environmental and landowner groups applauded today’s vote as one more step in the road to rejection for the pipeline.

“Today’s defeat of Keystone XL should send a strong signal to the
incoming GOP-led Congress that farmers and ranchers will never back down
to their oil soaked intentions. We call on Pres. Obama to stand up and
reject Keystone XL now,” said Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska.“The bill would have turned Congress into a permitting authority,
overriding environmental law, and giving a green light to a pipeline
project that would worsen climate change and threaten water quality. The
Senate did the right thing to reject the misguided bill, and now the
president should do the right thing and reject the pipeline,” said
Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We applaud the Senators who stood up for the health of our families
and our climate by fighting back against this big polluter-funded
sideshow. There’s no good reason the Senate should have wasted all this
time on yet another meaningless push for Keystone XL. Since day one, the
decision on the pipeline has belonged to President Obama, and he has
repeatedly said he will reject this pipeline if it contributes to the
climate crisis. As there is no doubt that it does, we remain confident
that is precisely what he’ll do,” said Michael Brune, Executive Director
of the Sierra Club. “Once again, Congress tried to play games with our future–and failed.
Since Keystone XL has always been President Obama’s decision, this vote
was never anything more than an empty gesture of political theater,”
said 350.org Executive Director May Boeve. “Rather than letting Congress
continue to play politics with our climate, President Obama should step
up and reject this dirty tar sands pipeline once and for all. By
dramatically accelerating the expansion of tar sands oil development,
Keystone XL clearly fails President Obama’s own climate test. The
pipeline is a lose-lose for everyone except for TransCanada. The
President has all the information he needs to reject this pipeline now,
and we’re going to stand by him to make sure he does.” “We thank all the Senators who voted against this dangerous Keystone
legislation, and we’re more confident than ever that this pipeline will
never be built. The decision remains right where it belongs – with
President Obama and Secretary Kerry. In the last week alone, President
Obama announced a game-changing climate change agreement with China,
committed $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, and raised his strongest
concerns to date about Keystone XL. This outstanding leadership builds
on the Clean Power Plan and other clean energy accomplishments, and we
believe that President Obama will remain consistent with that approach
by rejecting Keystone XL,” said League of Conservation Voters (LCV)
Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld. “It is likely that for the next two years we will be faced with one
of the most anti-environmental congresses in US history. Today, the
movement in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline defeated Congress’s
first salvo and showed that we will not let Congress attack our public
health and destroy the environment,” said Ben Schreiber, Climate and
Energy Program Director with Friends of the Earth. “This vote offers a glimmer of hope that there’s some sanity left in
the Senate,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel with the Center for
Biological Diversity. “Still, it’s really disturbing that the vote got
this far. Keystone XL would be a disaster for our climate, environment
and wildlife – we’ve got no business giving it serious consideration,
especially for what it’ll do to the climate. Here’s hoping we can now
move on to bigger, better energy policies that don’t put profits ahead
of future generations.” “Keystone XL is breathing its last breath, and it’s time for
President Obama to rise to leadership and outright reject it once and
for all,” said Kendall Mackey, Tar Sands Organizer with Energy Action
Coalition. “Young people have voted, sat-in, and made our voices heard,
and now that Congress has rejected Keystone XL, it’s time for President
Obama to put the final nail in the coffin.” “The pundits keep saying it’s inevitable that we will lose the tar
sands pipeline wars, but activists just keep winning battles” said Steve
Kretzmann of Oil Change International “This pipeline makes no sense in
today’s oil market, before you even begin to consider climate and the
rights of landowners. Republicans and oily Democrats need to face facts –
Keystone XL will never be built”. “After the recent election the Republicans expressed the desire to
work with President Obama. We hope that Congress is serious about this
and that they will stop having these votes and let the Presidential
Permit process play out as it has been designed to do,” said Paul
Seamans, a Dakota Rural Action member whose land is crossed by the
proposed Keystone XL. The approval of the Keystone XL pipeline is a line in the sand, but
this isn’t the stuff of playgrounds. This dangerous project will
threaten drinking water and make it extremely difficult to avoid the
worst impacts of global warming. We applaud today’s vote and all those
senators who stood up against tremendous pressure from the oil industry
and its allies and did the right thing for our communities and our
children’s future. Unfortunately, we know this isn’t the last time the
Senate will attempt to do the bidding of Big Oil. Ultimately, we’re
counting on the President to continue his leadership on climate and veto
any measure to force approval of this dirty pipeline,” said Anna
Aurilio, Global Warming Solutions Program Director with Environment
America. “This is the president’s decision, and he is going to reject Keystone
XL, as he steps up and at long last starts using his executive powers
to combat climate change,” said Elijah Zarlin, CREDO’s senior campaign
manager. “All this Senate vote proves is that a handful of Democrats are
standing on the wrong side of history to join Mary Landrieu in a last
ditch effort to protect the oil industry’s profits.”

This was well into the show, recorded in London, and was followed by a clip of Noam Chomsky at the U.N. wishing out loud that the U.S. would at least obey its own laws if it can't obey international ones, citing its massive support of Israel in contravention of domestic legislation prohibiting support of governments which systematically suppress human rights.
Brand may have been frustrated and seeking an outlet after Goodman's clear admonition to him that he would not be allowed to swear during his appearance because Democracy Now! is broadcast over the air in some locations.
Following that, Ms. Goodman seemed to backpedal when reminded by Brand that she had revealed that Noam Chomsky once bit her father at summer camp.
Goodman, clearly in a revisionist mood, now maintains that she might have confused Chomsky's biting wit for something more visceral.
Brand then drew a connection between the alleged incident and the name "CHOMPsky."

NOTE: After seeing the above, AKSARBENT went to sleep and, upon waking, wondered if the memory of all this was from a bizarre dream (in which case it could not be blogged) or from reality. We were relieved to find the web page still open in our browser and the post almost completely written.

Yeah, and we're disappointed in Sen. Fischer's revelation that she is now carrying water for the cable industry and telecom ISPs — by her opposition to net neutrality — as well as the outrageously dishonest spin she is trying to put on President Obama's attempt to preserve it.

As for Fischer's professed concern about, we assume, United States jobs generated by the Keystone XL pipeline project she is trying to force on rural Nebraska, perhaps she would look a little less phony and contrived if she displayed any concern at all about the fact that TransCanada, is buying huge amounts of pipe from Indian, not U.S. steel mills.

Robin Hoods in reverse: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) both voted for the GOP-led attempt
to transfer billions of dollars from the wallets of Midwesterners
to the profits of a foreign oil company by forcing approval of
the Keystone XL pipeline.

The vote (S.2280) was another attempt to force approval of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline from the Canadian border to Houston.
This isn't an oil pipeline; it is diluted bitumen ("dillbit"), an abrasive pipe-destroying goo which won't flow unless thinned with carcinogenic solvents whose exact composition TransCanada refuses to disclose to the landowners it has threatened with eminent domain condemnations even though it doesn't yet have a permit to build the pipeline.
Also, the stuff must be pressurized up to 1600 PSI (conventional crude flows at 600 PSI) and heated up to 160 degrees.
Because unusually toxic dillbit isn't technically oil, TransCanada (and Exxon, for that matter) refuse to kick in eight cents per barrel to the Treasury Department's
Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Last week, when House Democrats tried to require the Keystone XL pipeline project to do that, House Republicans shut them down in a 224-192 vote Nov. 14th.
California Sen. Barbara Boxer led the charge to defeat the bill, which needed 60 votes to pass but got 59. The legislation fast-tracks the construction of the extension to TransCanada's leaky Keystone 1 pipeline (which averaged 1 spill per month in its first year) across an extremity of the largest, purest underground aquifer in North America, which, in Nebraska alone, fuels a $20 billion ag industry.
Apologists have claimed that the pipeline will create lots of U.S. jobs.
It won't; few of the jobs will be permanent. (TransCanada is even buying pipe from India.)
Boosters also claim that the pipeline will create energy independence for the U.S.
That is also nonsense; the pipeline is through the U.S., not to the U.S. The product will be refined in Houston and sold on the world oil market to the highest bidder.

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.